Lupine Unit #1

By Strega 

"...Hostage situation here in Irvine," the reporter on the television said.  "The six bank robbery suspects are holed up in this Orangetree house, threatening to kill the family unless they are allowed to leave. A Lupine Unit van has just arrived..."

"Lupine Unit," Raoul said nervously. "That's one of the werewolves."

"Duh," Jaime said, looking at the screen without taking the muzzle of his AR-15 off the family huddled in the corner.  "Changes nothing.  If that thing comes in here we shoot them," he nodded to the retired couple, "Just like it was any other cop."

Robert was on the phone with the police negotiator, who hadn't mentioned the werewolf yet.  For whatever reason the police were allowing the press a lot of access, and as a result the crew had a good look at the goings-on.  The back of the Lupine Unit van opened and out came a gray-furred wolfman who stretched and then sat back on its haunches. A smaller black van pulled up and two cops rolled up the side, exposing a werewolf-shaped gray and black object that turned out to be a frame covered in armor. The werewolf pulled on a padded undergarment and as the two cops handed him segments of armor to strap on he quickly began to armor up.  Only the presence of humans next to the werewolf gave a sense of scale.  Standing fully upright he was half again as tall as the men and powerfully muscular.

Jaime's smug confidence took a hit when he saw which werewolf it was.  “That's Unit One," he said.  "The siegebreaker. They aren't fucking around."

"Neither are we," Robert said into the phone.  He gestured to Tom, Harry and Emilio, the three junior members of the gang, and the three took positions to cover the door. All had military grade weapons and against an unarmored werewolf they might have a good chance of winning, though from what they'd seen on the news from other Lupine Unit actions at least a couple of them wouldn't see the end of the battle.  The wolves were terrifyingly powerful, tough and fast and unarmed men had no chance whatsoever in a fight against one.  They were hardly unarmed but the werewolf out there was putting on several hundred pounds of armor which meant they were back on the losing side.  That's why they had hostages, though.

"Now you listen," Robert said on the phone.  "I see your dog out there.  If he comes through the door the first people we shoot are going to be the hostages."

"If we hear so much as one shot or a scream from in there," the negotiator at the other end said, "We're sending in the wolf with orders to eat all of you. Alive if possible, and saving you for his friends if he is full after only a couple.  So you lay down your guns and come out like reasonable men or you're werewolf chow."

As there seemed to be a bit of a gap between their respective negotiating positions little was accomplished but bickering but the police clearly wanted to resolve this without any civilians getting killed.

On the screen the wolf was fully armored and a trooper connected hoses from some sort of pump to its back. The werewolf flexed its limbs to make sure the armor was snug, then lay down with his armored helmet facing the door of the house.  Another trooper checked what appeared to be some sort of gun mounted on the werewolf's head armor.

"What is that, a shotgun?" Raoul asked.

"Fuck if I know," Tom replied, the first words he'd said in an hour.  "Or what the hoses are for."

Half an hour went by and the press seemed to lose interest in the wolf, which lay there doing not much.  Occasionally it sat up and stretched its legs but the armor looked heavy for even such a powerful creature and it soon lay back down again.  A small police van arrived and parked with its back facing the house but little of import happened other than ongoing haggling with the negotiator.  As far as they knew, anyway.

"Two minute warning," said Lieutenant Black in Unit One's earpiece, and the werewolf rose to all fours and stretched as a trooper disconnected the cold water lines that kept him from overheating in three hundred pounds of armor.  Another pulled the cotter pin that served as a safety on the wolf's head-mounted weapon.

"Look!" Raoul said as he stared at the screen. There was the siegebreaker wolf on all fours, partially armored tail lashing.  No one needed to say anything. Every man present readied his rifle and Jaime, who previously kept his on the hostages, moved closer to the door. Raoul, closest now to the hostages, stepped closer to the wall to be out of the line of fire if Emilio started shooting at the door. This proved an unfortunate decision.

With every eye glued on the screen they knew they had at least a few seconds before the armored wolf could reach the door and were ready to find out just how bulletproof it was when it came through.  What they did not know was that the TV stations had been allowed to broadcast all this only if they agreed to a two minute time delay. By the time Unit One rose to his feet on the screen he was in fact already coming at the house at forty miles an hour, and not towards the door. Infrared cameras had told the cops where everyone in the house was and close to a thousand pounds of armored werewolf hit the wood frame wall forepaws first.  The drywall behind Raoul exploded as Unit One went through the side of the house as though it were made of paper.

Unit One plowed into Raoul and communicated all his momentum into the man with a single swipe of his forepaw. Most of Raoul made it out the far window, minus the bits that splattered on the frame.  Emilio was almost as close and wolf dug in his hindpaws, lunging the last few feet. He couldn't bite with his helmet on but the helmet alone weighed fifty pounds and the steel muzzle caved in Emilio's ribcage and sent him flying across the room, dead before he hit the ground.

Next on the menu was Tom, fifteen feet away but not out of range of the riot shotgun bolted to One's helmet.  Tom had on a ballistic vest but saying load of double-ought hurts even though that is an understatement and one of the nine pellets went through his upper arm. Each pellet of a 00 load is the size of a .32 caliber pistol bullet and Tom went down grunting in pain, rifle blown out of his hands and bleeding.

Powerful as One was the armor did slow him down and he didn't leap for the three men near the door.  Instead he stepped between the robbers and the couple cowering in the corner.  "Get down," he snarled, just as the men opened up with their AR-15s.

One's armor was thickest on the front quarter and he turned as far toward the door as he could without uncovering the couple.  A 5.56mm round skipped off his thick steel helm and went through the exposed tip of his ear where it protruded from his helmet and a splinter chipped the thick armored glass over his right eye but though the other impacts stung they didn't make it through the layers of repurposed trauma plates under the outer layer of Kevlar.  Trauma plates are typically disposed of when damaged as their protective value is diminished but many rules and regulations are blurry where Lupine Units are concerned and police officers from all over Los Angeles County had contributed used plates to Siegebreaker's thick coat of armor.

He bit down on the actuator for the riot shotgun and the blast made two men edge closer to the door.  It blew a chunk out of a red leather sofa the remaining robbers were using as cover and one pellet grazed Robert but the point of it was not to kill, though he would be pleased with that result, but rather to herd the men closer to the door.

Jaime was smart enough to know that a second assault was inevitable and with One passively defending the hostages he turned his rifle toward the door. Unfortunately he had not anticipated the arrival of not a police ram but instead a second werewolf.  Unit Seven hit the door with her forepaws and the heavy wooden portal came down like a drawbridge on top of Jaime with a five hundred pound werewolf on top of it. There was a smothered shriek and a crunch of bones but Seven had other matters to deal with.  Robert spun toward her, astonished, and the expression of surprise remained on his face even after her claws flicked out and decapitated him with one swipe. His finger spasmed as he died and a burst of automatic fire raked across her belly, mostly absorbed by the armor the female werewolf wore but tearing into her thigh and shooting the tip of her tail clean off.

That just made her mad and as Harry saw One tensing to rush him out of the corner of his eye and and Seven raise her bloody claws two yards away he dropped his rifle.  "Peace!  I surrender!"

"Clear," One growled into his helmet microphone as he found Tom still stunned on the ground and pinned him there with a massive clawed hand.  "Clear," said Seven into hers.  She wore a set of armor halfway between the standard shorts-and-vest and One's massive plate, including a helmet cobbled together out of titanium trauma plates.  

Ten seconds later the room was full of cops and the werewolves' partners were there at their sides. The retiree couple were hustled out of their bloodied living room as was the uninjured bank robber.  Jaime was peeled off the floor and sent off on a stretcher, so squashed by Seven's dramatic entrance that he'd be lucky to ever walk again. Tom limped out with a police medic in attendance and his hands cuffed behind his back. As the survivors departed they passed the second police van, small and unassuming and with nothing as dramatic as Lupine Unit written on the side.  Yet a werewolf had fit into the back readily enough until it was time for her to pounce.

As the retirees and the surviving bank robbers filed out One and Seven stood side by side with their human partners nearby. The bloody wounds on Seven's flank were knitting themselves closed but she had sustained a significant injury from that burst of gunfire and a werewolf's regenerative healing leaves them hungry. The wall of bodies allowed Seven to scan the room on the side away from the civilians. 

She cast a speculative  glance at the shattered body of Emilio but a coroner was already working on it and had Tom not already been led out he might have gotten a short trip through a hungry werewolf's digestive tract.   She contented herself with snapping up the few fragments of Raoul that hadn't quite made it through the window.  Usefully this included an entire arm that she bolted down shoulder first. No sooner had the still-twitching fingers disappeared into her maw than her human partner, whistling casually, punted Robert's head over. The surprised expression finally vanished as Seven's jaws closed and she tugged her armored collar to loosen it as a great bulge briefly formed in her neckfur, then was gone. It wasn't the first human head to go down her throat, though on previous occasions the heads had been attached to living bodies.

Under normal circumstances she'd need hours to digest the meat and bone but it is different with a wounded werewolf. Her body immediately seized on the available resource for healing and the belly bulge barely had time to form before it was gone. A low-pitched gurgle quite unlike her usual bodily noises emerged from her middle as Robert's head and assorted bits of Raoul were consumed. The small meal was so rapidly absorbed it did not even warrant a belch.

It was enough calories to replenish those she used healing her wounds but only just.  "Sorry, Seven," her partner said, ruffling the neckfur that showed below her helmet.  "Too much press for you to walk out gorged, but if one or two of the bodies isn't claimed I'll let you know." At least the she-wolf found her tail, which reattached itself when she pressed the bloodied ends together.

Outside the press took a few shots of One removing his armor and of the two wolves together. There were only eight werewolves on the force and it was rare to see more than one. The real excitement was over and they soon headed off to the next big news story.

Seven grumbled, still peckish after regenerating her wounds.  "Zhould have pretended to be more hurt than I was. No one would have missed a body or ze wounded one."

One nodded.  "Before the armor," he growled, "I got to eat more people."

"Hey partner," the female officer nearby said.  "I'm heading back to the station. The van's small but its warm."

One's partner looked from one wolf to the other, the hulking male and the more petite but still eight-plus-foot-tall female. He didn't miss the looks they were sharing or how One's clawed hand reached out to touch Seven's fading wounds but strayed suspiciously near her crotch.  "I can drop her off at your precinct. The van's more than big enough for two."

"I suppose it is," said Seven's partner with a smile, who knew her partner and had eyes in her head as well.

Soon enough the last of One's armor was back on its frame, the shotgun disarmed and the water pump, still full of ice water, in its locker. They'd go over the armor later to make sure soaking up so many bullets hadn't damaged it and replace one eye plate at least.  The hole on One's ear had long since healed and if he bore any bruises from the hail of fire or smashing through a wall he said nothing.  Off went the werewolf gear van and it was time for them to be going too.

One and Seven, now down to just the shorts-and-vest that constituted Unit daily wear, went briefly bipedal as they climbed into the padded back of the Lupine Unit van. Like all the werewolves they were fully capable of walking upright and possessed huge clawed hands but often went on all fours.

They ran on all fours, and sometimes fought that way.  And they did other things on all fours, too. "My heat is due zoon and I'll have to go away for a while," Seven growled as One nuzzled into her neckfur.

"There are always humans," One replied as he raked her furry belly gently with his claws. Most of the wolves had one or more humans they lay with, aided by the fact that their exotic nature attracted more potential lovers than any one wolf would ever need.   In the minute since climbing into the van each wolf had lost its shorts and as he teased her with his claws she rubbed her tail against his belly and the already developed stiffness there. Siege work always raised One's blood and he'd been hard even before he took off his armored codpiece.  "Even if they are zmall and fragile."

It was especially difficult for the male wolves, who must treat their human lovers like delicate crystal sculptures. It wasn't just in strength and toughness that they outstripped men.  A male werewolf was simply too well endowed for nearly any human. There were ways around it but they all required great self control on the part of the werewolf. 

With a fellow wolf he need exercise no such restraint. His partner heard the joint growl from the back of the van as One mounted his lover and slid the window between cab and van body shut. The werewolves were far stronger than men, tenfold for even the smaller ones, more like twenty times for big ones like One. The motions of two powerful Weres shook the van as it drove along and One's partner slowed to a more cautious speed lest the rutting wolves throw the vehicle right off the road.

"Guess I'll take the long way home," he muttered, but he was smiling as he said it. Even for tough beasts like the werewolves police work was not a safe career.  They risked their lives on a daily basis to protect the public and their fellow officers and if he had to fudge a travel report to give the wolves time to work off some stress, well, that was exactly what he would do.  He'd done it before. 

He keyed the radio. "Dispatch, this is Van One. I have One and Seven on the way back from the siege. Please make sure there's some meat available. Seven got shot up some and is going to be hungry." 

"Everything all right?"

"Everything's fine," One's partner said, hoping, not for the first time, that the dispatcher couldn't hear the feral growls coming from the back of the van. "But you know how it is. The wolves always work up an appetite on a job like this."